Edge of Apocalypse (44 page)

Standing next to Joshua, Zimler demanded, "Give me the password for your email system."

"No, my son's safe now. The rules of the game have just changed...you lose..."

"Are you insane? I've got this briefcase rigged to blow in a few minutes. Give it to me, and I'll stop it..."

"You're not getting my RTS documents."

"Then you'll die."

That was something that Joshua had prepared for down in his gut, all along. But he was anguished. His world was collapsing. He wanted to say good-bye to Abby. To say something to Cal and Deb. But no time...

Joshua looked down at the briefcase and ran his hand along the surface. He recognized the material.

"Yes, titanium," Zimler said. "Nearly impossible to break into from the outside. But at the temperature of eight hundred degrees Fahrenheit--when a bomb explodes in it--it breaks apart into shards rather well. So if you're going to be a hero, you may want to avoid crowds. Difficult, though, in a place like this. Good-bye."

Zimler tucked the gun in his pocket and fled the room. Fifty feet away he ducked into a men's room and into one of the stalls. He ripped off his theatrical beard and his Amtrak coat and tinted glasses. He looked at his watch. Now he had to get out of the station.

The LCD screen on the briefcase handcuffed to Joshua said: 02:05...02:04...

Joshua burst out of the utility room, yanking wildly at the handcuff on his wrist. He couldn't squeeze his hand out. He looked for a knife, something sharp somewhere. Couldn't he cut his hand off?

He started running down the corridor leading to the trains.

He started yelling, "Bomb, bomb, get away from me! There's a bomb in this case! Get away..."

Crowds around him started screaming and tripping over themselves to get out of his way.

He saw a tunnel leading to the tracks. Away from the building. Away from the masses. He had to get there. Joshua was sprinting with the briefcase dangling from his wrist. An Amtrak security guard lunged at him. Joshua knocked him backward and kept running.

Now he was breaking into the train yard. Trains were lined up on several tracks with passengers climbing in.

He whipped his head around looking for a vacant space. He looked down at the LCD screen. It said: 00:56 seconds.

Abby, I love you. Cal and Deb, I love you.

He spotted an empty track at the far end. He sprinted over toward it. Then he heard someone calling his name.

It was Agent John Gallagher, running and shouting, "It's Agent Gallagher, FBI!" He was about a hundred feet behind him and had spotted him.

"Joshua, wait...," the Agent yelled.

"This is a bomb...," Joshua yelled back. "Stay away."

"We can help!"

"No time..."

The LCD screen said: 00:36...

A train engine pulling a single empty car was approaching. Joshua rushed up to it on the platform overlooking the track.

Something triggered in Joshua's brain.

Caught in the thicket.

He looked back at Gallagher. Then Joshua made a frantic decision. When it happened Gallagher saw it and his jaw dropped open.

Joshua leaped down into the path of the oncoming train engine.

Someone on one of the other passenger platforms screamed out.

Down on the railroad tracks, Joshua draped the five-inch chain of the handcuffs over the metal rail with the briefcase laying on the other side of the track. Then he jammed his body as far as he could away from the oncoming train, over against the side of the retaining wall.

With a deafening screech the engineer slammed on the train's brakes. The train kept sliding forward, spitting sparks, passing inches away from Joshua's left hand, over the handcuff chain on the rail, smashing it apart and separating him from the briefcase bomb.

The train was slowly grinding to a halt, its metal brakes locking down against metal. The train came to rest with the back half of the empty passenger car directly over the suitcase bomb. Joshua scrambled wildly to his feet and leaped up to try and grab the upper platform and pull himself up. To get away from the force of the blast that was only seconds away. But he missed. He jumped up again, catching the platform above him with his fingertips. He yelled out in an animal grunt, bringing his knees up and trying to push up with his knees.

It's going to blow.

Arms aching, he made one last exhausted effort, kicking, pulling, fingernails digging into the cement platform. Now his hands were flat on the surface of the platform and he was pulling himself up. His head. His torso. Then up to his waist. He belly-flopped onto the platform. Joshua stumbled to his feet and started running toward the station and away from the bomb.

Faster. Faster.

Then it happened. An unearthly roar of smoke and fire and percussion blew up from the tracks. The blast of the bomb picked up the passenger car and jackknifed it into the air and heaved the car and the locomotive against the cement embankment with a hellish, crashing groan of smashing steel and sparks.

Still running on the platform, Joshua caught the full force of the combustion and was catapulted into the air, flipping and tumbling along the platform like a rag doll. Screaming passengers on the parallel train platform panicked and ran into each other and tripped over their baggage while others threw themselves to the ground. Down on the tracks, black billowing smoke poured out from the train engine, which was now on its side as diesel fuel spilled over the scene. The engineer pulled himself out of the open window and then leaped down to the tracks in a frenzy. He was hobbling in pain as fast as he could down the track away from the demolished train. Then the diesel fuel caught fire and a ball of flames enveloped the train and the empty passenger car in a raging inferno.

John Gallagher had been thrown to the ground by the outer cyclone of the blast. When he picked himself up and stumbled to his feet he looked down the platform and spotted the familiar body that was now tangled in a heap. Gallagher bellowed out a single word in a hoarse cry.

Joshua!

PART FOUR
Red Sky at Dawn

North Korea and Iran are already known to co-operate intensively in developing nuclear capable missiles. So what is to stop them helping each other with their nuclear programmes?

"Iran, North Korea and the Bomb--Spinning New Dark Tales."

The Economist
(September 12-18, 2009)

Under [Iranian President] Khatami, with continued Russian assistance, the Iranian missile program was in fact accelerating...Russian assistance was contributing to many key aspects of the Iranian missile program: the warhead, the fuselage, and guidance systems.

Dore Gold, former Israeli Ambassador to the U.N.,
The Rise of Nuclear Iran
(2009)

And you, son of man, prophesy against Gog, and say, "Thus says the Lord God: 'Behold, I am against you, O Gog, the prince of Rosh, Mesheck, and Tubal; and I will turn you around and lead you on, bringing you up from the far north, and bring you against the mountains of Israel...'"

Ezekiel 39:1-2, NKJV

SIXTY-EIGHT

Two Weeks Later

Agent John Gallagher sat on the edge of a fake leather chair in Joshua Jordan's hospital room. He was feeling slightly out of place, although Abigail was there, and she was trying her best to make him feel like part of the family.

Debbie had been pumping Gallagher for information about his life as an FBI agent. He patiently shared a few interesting incidents, though he was not a guy to share war stories. So after awhile, Abigail told her daughter to give him a rest. So Cal and Debbie leaned back to watch the TV hanging by brackets from the ceiling. Cal was used to the cast on his broken finger by now. They were laughing at a silly TV commercial. Life was getting back to normal.

"So, you get out tomorrow?" Gallagher asked.

"Maybe," Joshua replied. He was in multiple casts. As he spoke, he tried to shift his position in the bed without tangling up the IVs. "You know how they play the medical game with you. Waiting until the last moment before you find out if you're going home."

"He's rushing his recovery, of course," Abigail said with a smile. Then the smile disappeared. "Josh had a hairline fracture of the pelvis. Broken collar bone. Fractured wrist. Multiple lacerations from the shrapnel. One of them punctured his back about one inch from his spinal column. Any closer and he'd be paralyzed."

"All things considered," Gallagher said, "you oughta be dead. You're a lucky guy."

"No, not luck," Abigail said with a tender kind of ferocity. "This was a miracle. This was God. The Lord wanted Josh alive."

Gallagher looked over at Joshua who was thinking it over.

"How can I argue with that?" he finally said. "I'm here, right?"

"Well," Gallagher said at last. "I'd better move along. There's a chili dog out there somewhere with my name on it." Then he got up slowly and stiffly.

"Agent Gallagher," Abigail said, reaching out and taking his hand. "Thank you. Thank you for being there for my husband. And helping to save our son."

John Gallagher didn't like the whole emotional scene, so he nodded quickly and turned to leave.

But Joshua had a question for him. "This Atta Zimler guy. What happened to him? I read in the news that he just disappeared. Vanished. It's troubling to know he might be out there somewhere."

When he said that, Cal stopped looking at the TV and looked over at his dad.

"I wouldn't worry about Zimler," Gallagher said.

"Oh?"

"No. We have some pretty good intel that the guy may have been killed overseas. Here's hoping..."

"Anything you can talk about?"

"Not really. I'm in enough trouble."

"Hey, are you kidding? You're a hero," Cal interjected. "I saw them give you that commendation on TV."

Gallagher smiled. Sure, he got a Bureau commendation. But the next day, in the office, Miles Zadernack dropped a written reprimand on his desk. It read: "...failure to notify supervisor of a request to consult with local police regarding a terrorism incident." Still, Gallagher didn't care. He looked at a live Joshua Jordan and his son, who was now laughing at a stupid TV show rather than lying in a million pieces. So he knew it was all worth it.

As he stood in the hospital doorway, Gallagher turned to say one last thing. It could have sounded perfunctory. It was probably said by all the agents to all the other families who had ever been traumatized. But this time, Gallagher meant it in a way he'd never meant it before.

"You know," he started to say. But right then he was surprised at how he had to fight a little to keep it together and not get choked up. "You people...you're the real heroes here. Just wanted you to know that."

Then he gave a clumsy wave and left the room.

On the way down to his car, he was thinking about what he couldn't share with Joshua Jordan and his family. Classified information about Atta Zimler.

Of course, it was disturbing at first. The thought that Zimler had killed and tortured his way to the Jordan family, and then he terrorized them, yet had slipped right through the fingers of the large nest of NYPD officers at the scene. A clean escape. As if by some magic act.

Zimler knew that the airports and the roads would be watched. Getting out of New York City would be daunting. Which is why he'd planned all along, whether he was able to get the RTS documents or not, on the escape route he would use.

He'd spent an enormous amount of money in advance rigging his exit strategy from the United States. Zimler had prepared a large ocean-going container in the New York harbor and fitted it for human habitation during the Atlantic crossing. It had a chemical toilet, an air circulation system, a small solar-run generator, a satellite phone, and computer and plenty of freeze-dried food and water for the trip. From the outside, it looked like just another corrugated metal shipping container that would be loaded on a cargo ship bound for Rotterdam.

Once he landed in the Netherlands, he would connect with a member of the Muslim Brotherhood that he knew. He would go underground for a few months. Then he would start making his way to Cyprus where the initial fee that Caesar Demas had paid him was still waiting for him in an account.

And it was a smart plan.

Except that Petri Feditzch, in his shipping office in the Rotterdam port, got wind of it. He knew that Zimler had failed in his mission and that Caesar Demas had no more use for the assassin. So Feditzch made a call to some old friends in Moscow. Then, when the ship pulled into the harbor, and Atta Zimler's big metal container got unloaded, he had a greeting party waiting for him.

It was Vlad Levko and two other Russian FSB agents. They had two reasons to be there. First, they wanted to verify that Zimler hadn't confiscated the RTS documents himself, while pretending that his mission had failed. But they had a pretty good idea that, in fact, Zimler had returned empty-handed. The only exception to that was the fact that Joshua Jordan had been forced to email an executive summary of the RTS protocols. But it was questionable how useful that limited data might be.

But there was also another matter too. The business about Zimler assassinating several friends of Levko's in the FSB. That made it personal.

After the shipping container was lowered down on the dock, the Russians got ready.

Levko gave the signal to his two agents. They donned toxin masks, and one of them pulled out a radioactive aerosol. They would swing open the metal doors, and they would spray Zimler in the face. Then the Russians would lock him into the metal container from the outside. It would take Zimler about three hours of horrifying agony before he finally would lose consciousness. Two hours after that, covered with hideous radiation burns, he would be dead.

Laying his hand on the locking handle of the metal door, Levko lifted the handle and swung the door open. He shined a big flashlight into the container.

Levko took a step in. He was almost too wide for the narrow doorway. He stopped inside the big metal container, with his back to the agents. Then he turned, emotionless, and stepped back out into the sunlight.